


No Spell And No Dream

by feverishsea



Series: Even Mortals Have More Sense [3]
Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-16
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 16:02:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/763284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverishsea/pseuds/feverishsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Yes,” Thorin says slowly. “There is a forfeit.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Spell And No Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently the top ten unsolved mysteries of the world are all the color of Martin Freeman's eyes. So I went with my best guess.

The elves chitter like birds, and they smell as sugary-sweet and sickening as a human’s candy shop.

“Do you not care for Rivendell at all?” a small voice asks by his side.

Thorin looks down to see the Halfling looking back up at him from under that curly mop of hair. It’s a golden-brown color, and the small creature’s skin is light as sun-stripped rock, with a hint of pink. Everything about the Halfling looks soft; Thorin imagines that if he reached out that skin would feel like silk against his rough fingers.

Or perhaps his hide is too tough to feel such fine things at all.

“No,” he says, voice catching in his throat. “I do not care for rabbit fare or fluttering songs, or the twist of an elves’ words.”

The Halfling hums, more musical than any harps they’ve heard this evening.

“Did your – did Erebor,” Bilbo pronounces the name carefully, “have no such things? Singing, and dancing, and fine clothes?”

For a second Thorin’s footsteps falter. His boots scuff the pristine overworked stone floor and as instead of an ornately embellished arch, in front of him he sees a huge hall wrought in iron and dark stone. Broad figures with hearty laughs glide by, their faces blurred. Heavy, filling fare covers the solid tables until they groan. For a moment he’s back in that great hall, standing in the middle and watching his kin dance and sing around him while he stands apart in the eye of the storm.

The Halfling coughs into his fist and Thorin snaps dizzily back into the present. He turns his head to look again at the odd creature that looks like honey and dawn, so far removed from anything Thorin’s ever known and yet, against all reason, is a welcome warmth at his side.

“You know, I never fit in much either,” Bilbo volunteers with a quick, concise nod. Thorin is speechless; he just cocks an eyebrow and the Halfling takes that as encouragement enough to go on. “Nope, ask anyone in the Shire. I was quite the – well.”

Against a lifetime of inclination, Thorin finds his mouth opening.

“Such a Halfling as yourself was not seen as a fit for the community? What could you possibly have been lacking?” The words are partly teasing, partly honest curiosity, and entirely inexplicable. Thorin runs practiced hands over his braces and the slots where his weapons fit. Everything is in order; this is no spell and no dream.

At least, not the ordinary sort.

Bilbo lifts his chin and gives Thorin a suspicious look. He shakes his finger quickly at Thorin and then locks his hands behind his back.

“Ah! You may mock me, Master Dwarf, but I’m telling you the truth of it. I may not seem, er, much of a character next to you lot, but in the Shire, well. Things are done a certain way.”

Even with the gauche ostentation of the architecture, Thorin can still pick out one room from another. They’ve reached his destination. He halts in front of the door and lingers.

“Are they now?” he asks in a low rumble, staring down at the Halfling, who stares back up undaunted with eyes as clear as cut gems. Sapphires, with tone so dark as to be gray, he thinks absently. Only a semi-precious gem, but then, it depends what you need it for, doesn't it? “And you didn’t do them this way?”

Bilbo gives him a wry twist of a smile. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Thorin nods gravely. “That you are, Master Halfling. And perhaps we’ll be glad of it yet.”

The Halfling’s eyes go so wide that Thorin feels half guilty. Then Bilbo ducks his head and scuffs one of those ridiculous feet along the sandy floor.

“Ah, perhaps, but I doubt it.” Thorin wonders if the Halfling’s curls could possibly feel half as soft as they look. Everything about the hobbit is warm and inviting and Thorin isn’t sure when he started wanting that. He shifts his weight from foot to foot uncomfortably, thumping his thick boots against the floor.

“Mayhap. But it may be you’ve a knack for something. I find myself quite off balance with you, if only because you’re such an odd little creature,” Thorin confesses, clearly taking leave of his senses. But it’s been such a hard road – not just this one, but all of them, since they left their stone halls – and though Thorin may begrudge the location he knows that they are safe here, and he cannot help thinking that if he were but to clasp the Halfling to his breast he would feel… something.

It’s only then that Thorin notices they have been saying nothing at all in front of his door for rather a long time, and yet the Halfling has shown no interest in leaving.

Bilbo raises his head and Thorin almost chuckles. The hobbit’s indignant expression is gloriously out of place on something about as threatening as a kitten with its eyes still shut.

“You don’t look off balance to me,” Bilbo says. Then he grins suddenly, and while Thorin’s eyes are following the curve of his lips, the hobbit lunges forward and shoves his little hands against Thorin’s chest.

Without giving it more than a moment’s thought, Thorin rumbles out a laugh and sweeps an arm around the Halfling, yanking him in close, just the way he’d do to a mischievous young nephew.  

Even Bilbo’s clothed skin is softer than any part of a dwarf, and he squeaks like the pet bat Thorin kept when he was very young, and he smells like a dusting of honey. He is so very small and fragile in Thorin’s embrace, and it is nothing like a quick jesting scuffle with a nephew after all.

“Oh!” Bilbo’s breath pants out against Thorin’s beard and the warmth of it seeps all the way to the bare skin of his neck. “Put me down! I didn’t mean it!”

Thorin doesn’t let him go. “I know,” he says, and pulls back to look the hobbit full in the face.

The Halfling almost looks as though he’s resting on Thorin’s broad chest; he stops struggling immediately and stares round-eyed at Thorin. Perhaps there is a bit of fear in his gaze, but it seems to be mostly curiosity, and maybe even wonder. It is meet enough; Thorin wonders at the situation himself. But he is still not letting go of the Halfling.

“Is… Well, I did lose. Do I owe you some forfeit?” Bilbo asks, his voice lower and softer than before.

A flash of white at the corner of his eye makes Thorin glance up.

There is an elf standing there at the end of the passageway – not the elf from earlier but a different one with eyes as hard as diamonds. Grace means little to dwarves, but they know power, and this elf has power etched in every line of her body. She is beautiful even to his kind, but more than that she is frightening.

The elf-lady stares for a long moment before inclining her head and vanishing around the corner, taking all of Thorin’s peace of mind with her.

“Is everything alright?” Bilbo squirms against him, making Thorin glance back at those wide eyes and that soft skin.

There are things he… but no, this is madness; this is the sort of thing he could not take back after a single night.

So Thorin sets the Halfling gently back on the ground, ignoring the disappointment that flits over the hobbit’s face. He starts to turn away and then pauses; fingers a worn leather handle at his belt.

Bilbo is still standing there, his fair head cocked to the side, watching.

“Yes,” Thorin says slowly. “There is a forfeit.”

Hobbits and elves and fleet creatures, but dwarves are swift when they wish as well. Thorin’s arm swings out and there is barely time for torchlight to glance off the blade before it has done its work and is being tucked safely back in its scabbard.

“What in all seven hells was that?” Bilbo demands, both hands going to the top of his head and clutching. Thorin doesn’t laugh, but he smiles a little.

“Your forfeit,” he says. “Goodnight, Master Hobbit.” Then he steps into his room quickly and shuts the door before he can make any more ill considered choices.

It is foolishness, he knows. And yet more than once in the dark, dreary days that follow does Thorin open the small leather pouch on his belt and tip out a curl of sandy-brown hair that catches the sunlight in his palm.


End file.
